Staying Socially Alive
STAYING SOCIALLY ALIVE: Examining Kindred’s Application and Extension of ‘Social Death’ as it Pertains to Black Women"
Octavia Butler’s Kindred not only expands Orlando Patterson’s Slavery and Social Death, but also instigates the argument of this essay, which reveals how the concept of social death uniquely affects Black women under American slavery. Through the characters Dana, Rufus, and Alice, Butler first shows the enforcement of social death from white male power through the use of sexual violence and domination. While Dana experiences the process of becoming socially dead, Rufus functions as a “social killer”, and Alice demonstrates how sexual exploitation creates Black women’s social death as a more permanent and invisible experience. In all,this essay’s argument is found to be that this unique form of social death extends beyond the antebellum period and continues to shape how Black women’s suffering is overlooked today.